Whitewashing American Exceptionalism
Racialized Subject-Positioning and US Foreign Policy
Bibliographic Data
| ID | 6274011 |
|---|---|
| Authors | Richard W Maa (0000-0003-0057-3303, Old Dominion University, corresponding author) |
| Year | 2024 |
| Volume | 68 |
| Issue | 3 |
| Publication date | 2024-06-24 |
| Peer Reviewed | Yes |
| Open Access | Yes |
| Type | ARTICLE |
| Venue | International Studies Quarterly (JOURNAL) |
| Journal identifiers | ISSN: 0020-8833 • E-ISSN: 1468-2478 |
| Publisher | Oxford University Press (PUBLISHER • GB) |
| DOI | 10.1093/isq/sqae085 |
| OpenAlex | W4400080178 |
| Language | EN |
| Citations received | 4 |
| References cited | 99 |
s American exceptionalism is enjoying a revival of scholarly interest amid new approaches to studying foreign policy narratives and unease regarding how US policymakers will manage a less unipolar international system. That revival coincides temporally, though not yet substantively, with growing attention to racialized dynamics and Eurocentrism within international relations. This article examines how core strands of American exceptionalism—the prevailing narrative framing of US foreign policy—reflect a whitewashed understanding of US foreign policy that can best be understood as the product of racialized subject-positioning that saturated its historical development. After conceptualizing American exceptionalism, it develops a theoretical framework to capture how racialized subject-positioning stratifies understandings of a nation’s role in the world. It proceeds to investigate how this process shaped the development of American exceptionalism in line with epistemologies of immanence, ignorance, and innocence, producing exceptionalist narratives that neglect non-white populations as meaningful others in the construction of US national identity and that negate US interactions with those groups as relevant evidence that might undercut its exceptionalism. These whitewashing effects remained embedded even as overtly racist discourse became delegitimized, posing enduring obstacles for US diplomacy today
American exceptionalism · Exceptionalism · Political economy · Political science · Politics · Sociology · Subject (documents · American Constitutional Law and Politics · Computer Science · Gender Studies · Global Peace and Security Dynamics · International Relations and Foreign Policy · Law
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America's Mission: The United States and the Worldwide Struggle for Democracy
Great Delusion
The Frontlines of Peace
Legitimating Identities
Imperialism, Sovereignty and the Making of International Law
Legitimacy and Power Politics
Theory of Unipolar Politics
Narrative and the Making of US National Security
What Good Is Grand Strategy?
What America Owes the World
Status and the Challenge of Rising Powers
Status in World Politics
Race and racism in international relations
Plausible Legality
Racism
Islamophobia and Racism in America
W. E. B. Du Bois
At Home Abroad
American Exceptionalism and the Legacy of Vietnam
American Exceptionalism
Race in North America
Racial Formation in the United States
Black Gold, White Crude
The Monroe Doctrine and the Indigenous Americas
"Difficult to Relinquish Territory Which Had Been Conquered"
Woodrow Wilson, World War I, and American National Security
A Political Economy of Global Security Approach
Is a New Cold War Inevitable? Chinese Perspectives on US–China Strategic Competition
Role Legitimation in Foreign Policy
The Myth of American Isolationism
China's “Major Country Diplomacy”
Race in International Relations
Comparative Exceptionalism
Westphalian Eurocentrism in International Relations Theory
Conceptualising and historicising the US foreign policy establishment in a racialised class structure
From the Obama Doctrine to America First
Racial Hierarchy and Jurisdiction in U.S. Status of Forces Agreements
Through, against and beyond the racial state
Black banker, white banker
Exceptional “We” or Exceptional “Me”? Donald Trump, American Exceptionalism, and the Remaking of the Modern Jeremiad
Is IR Theory White? Racialised Subject-Positioning in Three Canonical Texts
The Bounds of 'Race' in International Relations
Known unknowns
America's Liberal Illiberalism
Racialization and International Security
The Roots of the Bush Doctrine
Orientalism in a globalised world
Race and Revolution at Bwa Kayiman
Freedom by Degrees
The Eurocentric Conception of World Politics
Struggles for Recognition
Everything’s negative about Nigeria
What about Marcus Garvey? Race and the transformation of sovereignty debate
System Maker and Privilege Taker
Race in the Ontology of International Order
Introducing the Military Intervention Project
Legitimation Strategies in International Hierarchies
Recognizing International Status
Racism and Antiracism in the Liberal International Order
Legitimacy and Authority in International Politics
Beyond the “Sinew of War
Race in International Relations
Left of Liberal Internationalism
Race, Status, and Japanese Revisionism in the Early 1930s
Rhetoric, Legitimation, and Grand Strategy
The Color of Threat
Racism by Designation
The rise of Chinese exceptionalism in international relations
The formation of American exceptional identities
Constructing National Interests
Decolonising war
American Exceptionalism in an Age of International History
Rethinking Modernity
Hidden in plain sight
Building peace from below-the potential of local models of conflict prevention in Haiti
The Collective Dynamics of Racial Dehumanization and Genocidal Victimization in Darfur
"National Security" as an Ambiguous Symbol
Is American Foreign Policy Exceptional? An Empirical Analysis
Ideology and armed conflict
The Reassociation of Ideas and Purposes
Race and racism in the founding of the modern world order
The Struggle for the Recognition of Haiti and Liberia as Independent Republics
Domestic Distributional Roots of National Interest
The Typology of America's Mission
Race, Empire, and Epistemic Exclusion
| Unique citing works | 4 |
|---|---|
| Citations per year | 4 |
| Citation span | 2025 - 2026 (2) |
| Citation velocity | current |
| Highly cited | No |
| Citation types | Neutral: 4 |